Search results for ""Author Kate J. Armstrong""

AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • In a dazzling new fantasy world full of whispered secrets and political intrigue, the magic of women is outlawed but four girls with unusual powers have the chance to change it all.Magic is illegal in Simta, but for the right price, the wealthy can always partake. They need only procure a visit with a Nightbird, girls who can gift their rare powers with a kiss. Usually a tight-knit group, this Season’s Nightbirds couldn’t be more different. Matilde, the group’s veteran, relishes the feeling of power and freedom she thinks her Nightbird status affords, but rebels against her family’s growing expectation that she finally choose a suitor and pass her magic on to the next generation; fiery orphan Sayer, resigned to this life as a means to support herself, resents each transaction and the world Matilde so reveres; and novice Æsa, fears her own magic and thinks her very existence is a sin.But when the Nightbirds find themselves at the heart of a deadly political scheme that shakes the world as they know it, they must put their differences aside and band together to fend off those who would exploit them. In doing so, they discover their magic is more powerful than they could have ever imagined, and they see the Nightbirds system for what it is: a gilded cage. United, they are a potent force that could upend the patriarchal system that would hunt them as witches. But wielding their power could cost them more than they are prepared to lose. They must make a choice: to remain kept birds or take control, remaking the city that dared to clip their wings.Fiercely feminist and set in a thrilling, intoxicating world evoking the Jazz Age—full of speakeasies with magic cocktails, sharp-edged, duplicitous glamour, and handsome rogue alchemists—Nightbirds is an exciting debut fantasy that dazzles as powerful girls emerge from the shadows to determine their own fates.

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The Nightbirds are Simta’s best-kept secret: Girls with a unique and powerful magic they can gift with just a kiss. Some would kill to possess them; the church would kill them outright. But protected by the Great Houses, the Nightbirds are well-guarded treasures. As this Season’s Nightbirds, Matilde, Æsa, and Sayer will spend their nights bestowing their gifts to well-paying clients. Once their season is through, they’re each expected to marry a Great House lord and become mothers to the next generation of Nightbirds before their powers fade away. But as they find themselves at the heart of a political scheme that threatens not only their secrets, but their very lives, their future suddenly becomes uncertain. When they discover that there are other girls like them and that their magic is far more than they were told, they see the Nightbird system for what it is: a gilded cage. Now they must make a choice—to remain kept birds or take control, remaking the city that dared to clip their wings.

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With tensions rising and their powers no longer a secret, the Nightbirds must decide for whom and for what they are willing to fight for and how far they will go in the spellbinding sequel to the international bestseller Nightbirds. The Nightbirds were once their city's best-kept secret, but now the secret's out. What's more, they can do feats of magic no one has seen in centuries. They're like the Fyrebirds of old: the powerful women who once moved mountains, parted seas, and led armies. Some say that when four join together, they become a force that shakes the earth and sends magic rippling through it. It does seem as if something has awoken in Eudea, but the four girls responsible don't want the world to know the full extent of what they can doat least not yet. As the new leader of Eudea works to lift the prohibition on magic, the churchmen who do not support itand the gang lords who profit from itwhisper rebellion. The secret resistance who once sheltered the Nightbirds is rall

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